Colion Noir opens his video with a question that sounds simple, but it lands like a punch: why does a criminal do something “violent, outrageous, unforgivable,” and the conversation still somehow finds a way to blame everyone except the criminal?
He says the pattern is almost automatic. Not “why did the attacker do it,” not “why did the system fail,” not “what policies allowed it to keep happening,” but instead: “Did the victim respond perfectly?”
Colion frames that as the real sickness in how society talks about self-defense. He argues we treat the person who stops the danger like they’re on trial for not being flawless, while the person who started it gets treated like a complicated tragedy.
And he wants to run what he calls a “thought experiment” that cuts through the fantasy.
He points to Ab & Preach, saying they recently dropped a video reacting to the Bondi attack in Australia, and one moment inside that reaction video stuck with him. Colion says Abba asked the question most people dodge because it’s uncomfortable.
If someone has decided to take lives, do you now owe them your safety in order to spare them?
That’s the question that makes polite dinner conversation collapse. And Colion clearly thinks that’s the point.
“Reality Versus Fantasy” In A Fight You Didn’t Ask For
Colion is careful, at least at first, to say he’s not giving legal advice and not telling people what to do. He says he’s talking about what happens when theory crashes into a real-world threat.
His main argument is that the fantasy version of self-defense is neat and clean. In the fantasy, once you “disarm” somebody, the danger is over.
Colion says reality doesn’t work that way, because the threat isn’t just the tool in the attacker’s hands. The threat is the attacker’s intent.
And that’s where he says Ab & Preach got to the “uncomfortable truth.” Colion quotes the line he says they landed on: that violent bad people are stopped by violent good people. He knows it’s provocative, and he’s leaning into it to make a point.
This is where the heart of his argument lives. Colion doesn’t see self-defense as a morality play where you get extra points for being gentle while somebody is trying to kill you.
He calls it a survival problem, not a moral purity contest.
And the reason this matters, in his view, is because the public conversation often flips the burden. The attacker created the chaos, but the defender is expected to behave like a perfectly trained professional inside that chaos.
The Impossible Standard Placed On Ordinary People
Colion paints a picture that’s easy to recognize if you’ve ever watched a self-defense story unfold online. He says a criminal can be sloppy, reckless, and violent, and people still find ways to explain it away.
But the person who reacts has to be everything all at once.
Colion says the law-abiding person is expected to be “a surgeon,” “a therapist,” “a hostage negotiator,” a “constitutional scholar,” and a “Navy SEAL,” all while their brain is in panic mode.
That’s his core complaint: we demand perfect judgment during an imperfect moment.
He asks another blunt question: if someone is actively trying to kill you and you stop them, do you owe them a second chance if that second chance might cost you your life?
Colion’s tone here is basically, “Be honest.” People like the idea of restraint right up until the moment restraint gets you killed.
And if you’ve ever been in a high-stress moment—even a non-violent one—you already know your body doesn’t politely wait for your best thinking to kick in. Your heart races, your hands shake, time distorts, and decision-making becomes blunt and messy.
That doesn’t make someone evil. It makes them human.
Abba’s Brutal Example: Disarm Isn’t Always The Ending
Colion says part of why Ab & Preach’s discussion hit so hard is because they didn’t treat it like a clean Hollywood scene.
He points to Abba describing what he would do after getting control of a firearm during a fight. Abba’s line, as Colion repeats it, is that he’d either shoot right away or use the gun as a blunt instrument.
Colion says people hear that and assume it means Abba wants to “execute someone.” He argues that’s not what Abba is actually saying.
Colion interprets it as: “I don’t have the luxury of being wrong.”
Because in a real fight, you don’t know what you don’t know. You don’t know if the attacker has another weapon. You don’t know if there’s an accomplice. You don’t know if the attacker is stalling, acting, or waiting for you to hesitate.
Colion then points to a detail Ab & Preach raise that’s supposed to sober everyone up: after a struggle over the first weapon, the attacker pulled a second weapon and used it.
That’s the moment Colion wants people to sit with, because it turns the “just disarm them” fantasy into something darker. The conflict doesn’t always end when the first tool is removed.
Sometimes that’s just chapter one.
And this is where Colion’s message has real bite. He’s saying: when people demand perfect restraint from defenders, they’re often doing it from a safe couch, with the benefit of slow motion and hindsight.
The person in the moment doesn’t have that luxury.
The Devil’s Advocate Problem: Panic Can Hurt Innocents Too
Colion doesn’t completely ignore the counterargument. In fact, he says Ab & Preach raise it themselves.
The concern is real: you don’t want to encourage panic shooting, because chaos is confusing and people can misread what they’re seeing. Someone might run in to help, and in the fog of stress, they could get mistaken for a threat.
Colion treats that as a legitimate fear, not a cheap talking point.
And this is where the conversation gets more serious than the usual internet shouting match. Colion agrees with the premise that civilians shouldn’t be expected to be perfect, but he also acknowledges – by describing this “devil’s advocate” piece – that the standard can’t be “anything goes” either.
Even when you’re right to defend yourself, you still have to live in a world where innocent people exist near you.
So Colion tries to tighten the framing. He says self-defense is not just a vibe or a feeling. It’s a legal standard, and the hardest part is that people keep mixing up three different things:
What feels moral, what is legal, and what is practical in the three seconds when your body is in survival mode.
Those aren’t the same thing, and pretending they are is how bad arguments get born.
The Weird Habit Of Giving Criminals Grace
Colion circles back to his bigger theme: the criminal gets “infinite grace,” while the defender gets intense scrutiny.
He argues that we’ve developed a culture where the attacker is treated like a bundle of backstory and excuses. Meanwhile the person who stopped the threat gets treated like they’re a suspect who must justify every heartbeat of the decision.
He also leans into the idea that surrender can be real, but it can also be a trap.
Ab & Preach, as Colion quotes them, suggest that surrender might not matter if the person already started killing people. Colion doesn’t present that as bloodlust; he presents it as an argument about credibility and danger.
If you’re a civilian with no backup and someone says “I surrender,” are you required to gamble that they mean it?
Colion’s answer is basically: that gamble might be fatal.
And he’s right about one thing that people hate admitting out loud – there is no “safe” option in some moments. There are only options with risk attached.
The Part People Avoid: Self-Defense Isn’t Pretty
Colion’s final message is less about guns and more about honesty.
He says the real adult conversation is that intent is what makes someone dangerous, not just the object they’re holding. Disarming someone does not magically remove their will.
Civilians will never react perfectly. They will freeze, misjudge, and struggle to process what’s happening. Colion argues they shouldn’t be treated like monsters for that, especially when they were thrown into the situation by someone else’s violent choice.
But he also emphasizes that being human doesn’t remove the need for reasonableness. The goal is to stop a threat, not to seek punishment.
That distinction matters because it’s the difference between defense and revenge, and Colion wants people to stop pretending those are the same.
In the end, Colion credits Ab & Preach for forcing the uncomfortable questions into the open instead of keeping everything in the safe, sanitized fantasy world.
He says more people need to hear the full context, because these debates are too important to keep flattening into slogans.
And his closing challenge is the one that sticks: when evil shows up without warning, are we really going to keep demanding perfection from the person who had the courage to step in – while excusing the person who caused the chaos in the first place?
Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, John developed a love for the great outdoors early on. With years of experience as a wilderness guide, he’s navigated rugged terrains and unpredictable weather patterns. John is also an avid hunter and fisherman who believes in sustainable living. His focus on practical survival skills, from building shelters to purifying water, reflects his passion for preparedness. When he’s not out in the wild, you can find him sharing his knowledge through writing, hoping to inspire others to embrace self-reliance.
